Friday, November 11, 2011

Former grad assistant and now assistant coach Mike McQueary
will not coach Saturday when the Nebraska Cornhuskers visit Happy Valley due to
death threats against him.

Yep, death threats. Welcome to America.

Now it’s not clear if the deranged idiots who have
threatened McQueary’s life are furious with him for not breaking up the
horrific incident involving accused pedophile Jerry Sandusky and a still
unidentified ten-year-old that he stumbled upon in 2002 or are they the really
crazy branch of the scapegoat tree we labeled as idiots yesterday? We aren’t sure which, but either way if a
college football team moves you to threaten someone’s life (or poison your
rival’s trees) you need to be institutionalized – mental health facility or
prison, your choice.

Now, it’s clear that McQueary should have confronted the
naked Sandusky mid-incident and rescued the innocent child from the clutches of
a deviant. Doing so may have spared that
child and future victims some pain and suffering. Or it might not have.

Only he knows why he didn’t intercede, but let’s take a
moment to speculate.

1) He was so shocked he simply
couldn’t take any action.

2) As he was a 28-year-old grad assistant who wasn’t
yet married or the father of a daughter (as he is now), he wasn’t as
immediately incensed as he should have been.

Sorry, but that’s all we got on that one.

However, when he went back to his office to contemplate his
next move, things for the State College, PA native got a little more
complicated. While we aren’t justifying
what McQueary did next, we speculate these things influenced his ultimate
decision not to contact any authority other than Joe Paterno.

McQueary was born and raised in Happy Valley, all he
probably ever wanted to do was to play and then coach for Penn State. Half of
his life’s dream had come true as he played QB for the Nittany Lions in 1996
and 1997. He even set a few
records. He was halfway to the second-half
of the dream having landed a position as a grad assistant, and then one night
when all he wanted to do was put away his new sneakers, he encounters a
horrific scene involving another long-time semi-revered Penn State coach.

(Joe Robbins/Getty Images)

He was paralyzed. We
surmise he contemplated calling the police, but, no doubt, realized that had he
done so and the police arrived when Sandusky’s shower rape was over, it would
quickly devolve into “his word against Sandusky’s word” situation. The grad assistant's word against the mighty
long-term retired defensive coordinator who had founded a charity to help underprivileged
kids. If McQueary also assumed that it was likely that the State College police
officer who answered the call was also drinking the Penn State Kool-Aid, that
was not a viable option.

Mike McQueary was probably just a normal guy. A guy overwhelmed by the aura of Penn State
football and perhaps intimidated by the iconic individuals worshiped by the
program, the players, the students, the boosters and the alums. Perhaps he simply didn’t see himself as a
hero willing or capable of taking on such a behemoth.

We also believe this to be true: McQueary was a product of the almighty Penn
State football program and he probably didn’t believe in doing anything without
the approval of his ultimate superior – the ruler of the kingdom, Joe Paterno.

We also surmise that McQueary at some point between that
horrible moment in 2002 and his testimony before the Grand Jury, was concerned
that any thing he did or said would end his career at Penn State. Knowing how psychotic football programs are
about loyalty, his exposing Paterno and Sandusky may well have gotten him black-balled in all of major college football.

So, we speculate the McQueary simply put himself first and
made the safe play. In a world rocked
the last decade by scandals ranging from Enron to Wall Street it should be
abundantly clear that a significant portion of the population subscribes to a
simple philosophy of “me first.” Like
many other Americans, McQueary put himself, his family and his career in front
of those of all else.

He blew it, it’s that simple.

(Chris Gardner/Getty Images)

So, McQueary decided to sleep on it and simply inform his
boss the next day.

(And then there’s McQueary’s dad, who just raced past Cam Newton’s
old man into the Worst Fatherly Advice Hall of Fame…but that a story for
another day.)

So that brings us to Paterno and Scott H. Greenfield’s
Simple Justice blog eloquent overviews it all like this:

A young man saw something no young man should ever have to
see. He told an old man, a legend even
then, who passed him along to his technical superior because he was no more
clear on what to do than anyone else.
And the superior engaged in allopathic triage, making the symptoms
disappear without curing the disease, all in the hope that this would never be
known. Primary was the protection of the
Penn State football program.

Which brings us to a conclusion with the help of long-time
T.A.H. reader C. Gigs. Now, Gigs is a very bright fellow who usually engages us
with pro-Big (L)East musings. This will
no doubt curtail as Gigs’ favorite squad Syracuse is moving over to the dark
side of the ACC. Undeterred, we predict he will take the position that the ACC
is NOW superior because Syracuse and Pitt are equal to (or better than) Duke and
North Carolina. We will nip this in the
bud now, pointing out that Duke and UNC combined have won something like 150
NCAA basketball championships while The Orange has won three (two them prior to
WWII) and Pitt is tossing goose eggs…

That aside, Gigs sent a very complementary email yesterday
with this absolutely BRILLIANT observation:

We
have, in my opinion, a cultural and societal fear of damaging the reputations
of those we hold in high esteem while neglecting the protection of the innocent, weak and
vulnerable which borders on pathological. We culturally laud Harper Lee's To
Kill a Mockingbird, yet we learned little from it. Boo Radley is
still in the attic.

And that may be exactly why the home grown boy who grew up in
the shadow of Beaver Stadium to play quarterback for and then coach for one of
the (then) most esteemed football programs in the country simply couldn’t bring
himself to notify the authorities in 2002 or on any of 3,505 days since the
original debacle occurred.

WHERE IN THE WORLD...?

The way it is...

The way it was...

TAH DAMN GOOD CAUSE OF THE MONTH

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